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I'm not sure which portable you're talking about, but the Karma's manual mentions crossfading as a feature designed to seemlessly transfer from one track to the next.

Crossfading fades the next track in as the current one ends. It's not really the same thing as gapless -- and it's not what you want for albums such as Sergeant Pepper or Community Service, where the tracks were designed to flow together each-to-the-next.

"Gapless" just means that such albums are played without having extraneous gaps between the tracks inserted by the player. Unless you've tried to listen to Sergeant Pepper on an Ipod, you might be surprised to learn that, while Karma can achieve this, no other portable, and precious few PC-based MP3 players, can.

The OP was right that it's kind of a shame that we don't make more of a thing about gapless in our advertising. Someone on Riovolution suggested a TV advert set in a nightclub: lots of people, mostly with white headphone cables, dancing, then suddenly the music stops abruptly for a couple of seconds and only the one girl in the Rio shirt keeps moving, then the music starts again and the white-headphone crowd can start dancing again. And you could do another one with the same premise showing a line of rock guitarists on stage, all but one wearing white headphones, all but one stopping playing for a couple of seconds. I think that would rule.

Peter